Kona Coffee

Coffee is a post-contact plant in Hawaiʻi, brought in the nineteenth century and settled on the leeward slopes of Hawaiʻi Island, where the volcanic soil, the morning sun and the afternoon cloud of the Kona coffee belt suit it. The belt lies between about 800 and 2,500 feet (roughly 245 to 760 metres), and it carries the only significant domestic coffee production of the United States. The plantation households that came after the sugar years, among them Japanese families, worked the small farms on which the Kona tradition rests.

Kona coffee is Coffea arabica grown within the Kona district and sold under a name that Hawaiʻi's origin-labelling law protects. The cherry is picked by hand, pulped, fermented, washed, dried and milled to green bean, then roasted. The volcanic soil, the cloud cover and the microclimate give a mild, aromatic cup of low acidity. A blend may carry the name Kona on the label while holding as little as 10 per cent Kona bean, so only a label reading 100 per cent Kona describes the district's coffee.

Kona coffee is drunk black or with a little milk at breakfast, and with sweet bread, malasadas and the baked manju of the Japanese kitchen. The structural reason is that its low acidity and mild body do not fight the sweetness of dough and bean paste, and the roast's gentle bitterness cleans the palate between bites. It suits a medium roast brewed by pour-over or French press, which keep its aroma intact.